The Pirate Bay founder, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, has returned to Danish court after his imprisonment was extended for three weeks in December. Meanwhile, an online petition to improve his jail conditions has gained over 54,000 signatures.

The hearing is being held behind closed doors. During a previous
hearing last month, entry to the proceedings was also restricted.
His attorney Louisa Hoj maintains this is an unnecessary
precaution.

“The prosecutor has so far argued that the case is sensitive
and that the hearings should be held behind closed doors, but I
don’t think that the things we are discussing are particularly
delicate, and it would be good for the Danish people to see what
is really going on in this case,” Hoj told The Copenhagen
Post.

On December 18, Frederiksberg City Court ruled that Warg, aka
‘anakata’, was to spend an additional three weeks behind bars.

Warg is now facing six years in prison on charges of hacking the
Danish social security database, driver’s license database, and
the shared IT system used in the Schengen zone. He pleaded not
guilty.

RT @BehrozKarimi: Some
clapped when #anakata
entered the courtroom were warned they'ed get removed, it got a
little smile on gottfrids face.

The “Free Anakata” group has drawn attention to Warg’s
imprisonment comparing his “unbearable conditions” to
those received by convicted mass murderer Anders Breivik in
Norway, who killed 77 people in 2011.

The campaign points out that Warg is denied the ability to read
“newspapers, magazines, books that are in the prison library,
or his books that were brought from Sweden with him during
extradition.” Aside from that, his total contact with other
inmates cannot exceed nine hours a week, according to the group.

Addressed to both Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt
and the Justice Ministry, the petition criticizes Warg’s
isolation and calls for him to be provided reading material.

The petition, launched on December 26, has gained significant
support following the “Twitter storm” which began on Tuesday.
Prior to the storm, not many more than 1,000 people had signed
the petition. The petition has already got more than 54,000
signatories.

The “Free Anakata” team posted a list of links and called on
Warg’s supporters to tweet them starting at 8am GMT on January,
7.

“Please join us as we speak out against his unjust treatment
and let the world know that anakata is, in fact,a
political prisoner,” the group said.

Convicted of Internet piracy back in 2009, Warg had already been
serving a one year jail term in Sweden for hacking, where he was
extradited from Cambodia in 2012. He was then handed over to
neighboring Denmark in November 2013, extradited from Sweden
after facing charges of hacking into a Swedish public database
while he was in the country, and losing an appeal to the Swedish
Supreme Court.

The popular file-sharing website The Pirate Bay was founded in
Sweden in 2003 by Warg and two others – Fredrik Neij and Peter
Sunde – to allow its users do download music, films, and video
games free of charge.

The website later moved its domain to .sx, which is registered in
Sint Maarten, a Dutch territory in the Caribbean, due to frequent
attempts by the Swedish authorities to shut it down.